Umax Astra 1220P Color Flatbed Scanner

by UMAX

Product Details

Product Manual [190kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 13 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00000K33U
• Item model number: 1220P
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The UMAX Astra 1220P is a quality scanner for home and office use. A parallel-port interface makes setup simple; there's no need to open your computer. A printer pass-through port built into the Astra 1220P allows the scanner and printer to share one parallel port.

Use scanned images to add excitement to your documents, reports, and Web pages or share images by e-mail with clients, family, and friends. With the included software you can archive photos and important documents, copy, fax, and more. This combination of exclusive hardware and powerful software will be one of the most fun and useful computer tools you'll ever use. Explore your creativity and make your documents come alive.

From Winmag®

UMAX's name is synonymous with quality scanners for both home users and professional image editors. But the Astra 1220P suffers from sub-par image quality and design (it, too, has no on/off switch). It's far from the worst, however, and it does support 36-bit scans for apps such as Photoshop.

Installing the parallel-port scanner (SCSI and USB versions will soon be available) didn't take more than 5 minutes and a reboot. Bundled software includes OmniPage LE OCR, Presto PageManager and PhotoDeluxe.

UMAX's TWAIN drivers are excellent, loaded with virtually every tool you need, and the 1220P can return a full 36-bit image to a host application that supports those scans. Although the image was a little darker and softer than those produced by other 36-bit scanners, I still saw a much greater range of color and tone variance than with a 24- or 30-bit scanner.

The UMAX did fall short in image detail: In our Hexachrome test, object edges looked softened, and thin lines against a similarly colored background tended to vanish. At 600dpi, the scanner racked up a Ronchi score of 0.30, which is acceptable but in no way outstanding for a scanner of this price. When I scanned the magazine cover at 300dpi, the 1220P took 2 minutes and 30 seconds to return an image to the host.

On the whole, the Astra 1220P is a good entry into the low-cost 36-bit market. But it needs more work before it makes the WinList.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GOOD SCANNER ! 111, November 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Umax Astra 1220P Color Flatbed Scanner (Office Product)

This is a great scanner I know alot of people are thinking at such a low price why would it be good or work well ? But it does remarkably do yourself a favor get it

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor product, November 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Umax Astra 1220P Color Flatbed Scanner (Office Product)

I purchased a 1220P less than a year ago and from the very start it was noisy,slow, and finiky about sending images to the printer. A week ago it finally gave up the and started displaying mult-colored lines through the image. Tried a number of times to get through to Umax to no avail. Scraped it and bought another brand.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Home use of Umax Vistascan Astra 1220P, January 14, 2002

By 

Doug (Merkel, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Umax Astra 1220P Color Flatbed Scanner (Office Product)

For infrequent home use, this is really not a bad scanner for the low price. However, it does not hold up well to frequent use. Image quality is what you would expet from a lowend scanner. After about 1 year, I started to get colored lines through the image. These will disappear if you cycle the unit in preview mode several times. Even with this problem, at $...you can afford to throw it away and get a new one after a year.